The indispensable Don Boudreaux riffs on a comment here at The Big Questions to observe that one cannot consistently argue that both a) Citizen’s United gives outsized political power to corporations and b) corporations need to be nudged out of their excessive focus on quarterly statements. Political contributions, after all, do not ordinarily pay off within one or two quarters.

One can, I think, maneuver around Don’s point by maintaining that corporations focus on both the short and long runs, putting too much emphasis on the short run, but still putting enough emphasis on the long run to make it worth manipulating the political system. But that’s a tricky maneuver, and kudos to Don for pointing out that there’s at least some serious tension here.

(I’ll take the opportunity to add that Dave H., the commenter to whom Don is responding, has been a great asset to our comments section. I often disagree with him, but I’m sure glad to have him around.)

I submit that Hillary Clinton lost because she did not make even a minimal effort to make herself palatable to people like me — people who care primarily about economic growth, fiscal responsibility, limited government, individual freedom and respect for voluntary arrangements.

Because I care about those things (and for a number of other good and sufficient reasons), there was never a chance I would vote for Donald Trump. I gave money to Jeb Bush. Then I gave money to Ted Cruz. Then I gave money to the “Never Trump” movement that was trying to foment a revolt at the convention. Then I gave money to pro-growth Senate candidates. For me, the only remaining choice was between voting for Clinton and not voting for Clinton. (I also considered sending her money.)

I knew that if I voted for her, I’d never feel good about it. That was too much to ask. But I’d still have voted for her, if only she hadn’t gone out of her way to make me feel awful about it. And that she just would not or could not stop doing.

Every time I listened to her recite the litany of reasons not to vote for Trump, I cheered her on. But she seemed incapable of getting through a speech without veering off into the loony-land of free college and unfree trade. Most disturbingly — partly because it was most disturbing and partly because she harped on it so often — was the glee with which she looked forward to rewriting other people’s labor contracts and vetoing their voluntary arrangements. Do you want to accept a wage of less than $12 an hour in exchange for, say, more on-the-job training or more flexible work hours? Hillary says no. Do you want to forgo parental leave in exchange for, say, a higher salary? Hillary says no. And on and on.

(You could, of course, say that Clinton wants you to have both the parental leave and the higher salary. Unfortunately, while I believe that Donald Trump is dumb enough to believe that’s possible, it is not plausible to me that Hillary Clinton is dumb enough — or uneducated enough — to believe it’s possible. Workers are, after all, paid their marginal products, and if you force firms to pay them more than their marginal products, the difference comes out of the return to capital, which means nobody will invest in those firms and the firms won’t exist anymore. That, as Paul Krugman so loves to say, is Economics 101. So either she’s an unrepentant demagogue catering to supporters she hopes are that dumb, or she really does want you to have the parental leave in lieu of the higher salary, just because that’s what she chose for you, your own preferences being quite irrelevant.)

I could have voted for her despite all of that if she had just done two things. First, make some kind of argument for these policies — some argument based on some kind of market failure — some argument based on exeternalities or asymmetric information or some other reason why the usual market forces might not do their usual good job of bringing forth optimal labor contracts. I’m not sure what that argument would be, but if you’ve got one, I’ll listen. Even if it strikes me as a bad argument, I can still vote for you (given the alternative) as long as you show me you’re at least capable of thinking about this stuff. Otherwise, as far as I can tell, you’re utterly unconstrained by reason, in which case you’re likely to try to implement whatever bad idea pops into your head the next time you wake up in the morning.

And second, at least acknowledge that there is something troubling about telling other people what they’re allowed to negotiate. Go ahead and argue that although the heavyhandedness troubles you, you still, with some reluctance, think the heavyhandedness is justified because of X,Y and Z. Again, I don’t have to agree with X,Y and Z. I just have to have some indication that you’re not an insane power-crazed robot who just loves telling other people what they can and can’t do, in pretty much random ways, and without a shred of hesitation.

Give me that straw to grasp and I can vote for you. I literally yelled this at the TV screen more than once. But she offered no hope. She seemed not even to realize that anyone might be desperately seeking that kind of hope. So I, and I’m sure others like me, didn’t vote for her (despite listening to her speeches, right up to the end, hoping she’d hand me some thin reason I could take into the voting both).

Johanna Bobrow is by day a biologist at MIT, often by night a musician (both solo and in groups), sometimes in between an aerialist, and always my friend. When I first saw this video, I told her it was awesomer than the most awesome awesomeness ever. I firmly stand by that judgment.

There are approximately 22 million veterans of the United States Armed Forces. They are served — not always well — by the Veterans Administration, with a budget of about $182 billion a year. That’s almost $8300 per veteran per year.

Which raises the question: Why, exactly, do we have a Veterans Administration? My guess (and admittedly it’s only a guess) is that an overwhelming majority of those veterans would much prefer to lose the VA and get a check for $8300 every year instead.

Of course some veterans get end up claiming a lot more than $8300 a year in VA services due, for example, to combat-related trauma that manifests itself only years after leaving the service. But with $8300 a year, you can buy a lot of insurance against such contingencies (and with 22 million veterans each having $8300 a year to spend, there are sure to be a lot of new insurance products available).

How can it possibly be better to offer veterans medical services from just one provider — a provider facing no competitive pressure to excel — than to give them the cash that will allow them to seek out the providers they prefer — and/or to purchase something else entirely?

If you’re worried about the veteran who blows through his $8300 a year for 15 years and then suddenly develops a medical emergency related to his service, and if you’re unwilling to say “No” to that veteran, then you can at least hand out medical-care and medical-insurance vouchers instead of cash. There’s still no need for VA hospitals, or a VA at all for that matter.

I assume that the reason we nevertheless have a VA is that it facilitates corruption — it’s a way for politicians to funnel contracts to supporters and potential supporters. But has anybody even tried to muster an argument that it’s good policy?

R.I.P. Leonard Cohen, a major contributor to the soundtrack of my youth. I trust it is not inappropriate at this moment to pay tribute with this brilliant, weird and spot-on parody by the Austin Lounge Lizards. Herewith Leonard Cohen’s Day Job, from the (thoroughly brilliant) album Employee of the Month:

The following analysis assumes (as seems likely) that Trump has won Minnesota, Michigan, Arizona and Alaska, while Clinton has won New Hampshire. This gives Trump a total of 316 electoral votes, or 46 more than he needed.

Gary Johnson’s vote share exceeded the Trump/Clinton margin in 10 states, 6 of which (with a total of 38 electoral votes) were won by Cliniton and 4 of which (with a total of 75 electoral votes) were won by Trump.

Therefore, without Johnson in the race (and assuming that his absence wouldn’t have switched any Clinton voters to Trump voters or vice versa), Trump might have won as few as 316-75=241 electoral votes (making Clinton the president-elect) or as many as 316+38=342.

Less flippantly, there are some silver linings in this very dark cloud:

Lots of good people re-elected to the Senate: Portman, Toomey — still waiting to hear on Ayotte. This means there will be at least some smart and forceful advocates for what we used to call Republicanism.

ObamaCare will probably be repealed and might be replaced by something better. (Or not.) It even stands a chance of being replaced by something much better, along these lines.

Dodd-Frank is probably about to go away. Again, that stands a chance of being excellent news, depending on what it’s replaced with.

The estate tax is likely to be finally dead and buried. Beyond that, there is at least some hope for broader tax reform (closing loopholes, lowering rates, fewer incentives to overconsume, etc). I’m not aware that Trump has ever shown much enthusiasm for this, but if Congress takes the initiative there’s a least a chance of avoiding the veto that would have been certain under Clinton.

Donald Trump will name the successor to Antonin Scalia, along with, probably another one or two or three Supreme Court justices. I am hopeful that he’s sufficiently uninterested in constitutional law that he’ll hand over the choosing to someone like Mike Pence. Compared to what we’d have gotten from Hillary Clinton, this would be a majorly good thing. Of course it’s equally likely he’ll nominate, oh, John Gotti, Jr. or someone. But we have reason for hope.

More generally, we can at least hope that Trump is sufficiently uninterested in governing that he’ll hand over everything to someone like Mike Pence.

None of this remotely compensates for the prospect of living in an America where Trumpian stormtroppers go door to door ferretting out people to deport. None of it compensates for the Trump Depression that we’re in for if he’s serious about his trade policies. But it’s something.

The big loss is that there will be no unified right-of-center voice in American politics. Toomey, Portman and the rest of them will do what they can, but it’s Trump who will be taken to define Republicanism, which is to say that Republicanism will henceforth be pretty much the same thing as Democratism. If Hillary Clinton had moved to raise the federal minimum wage, tighten business regulations, favor some industries over others, and expand entitlements, there would at least have been a more-or-less united Republican party explaining why these are bad ideas. Now Donald Trump will do exactly the same things, with few on the right to oppose him. That, I think, is high tragedy.

Throughout this election season, Scott Adams (the Dilbert guy) has been right when I (and a whole lot of others) have been wrong. On his blog, Adams kept patiently explaining why Donald Trump would be a strong contender, while I and a great many others believed (or maybe just hoped and therefore believed we believed?) that Trump was a flash in the pan. Each of the many times that Trump seemed to take himself out of contention, Adams predicted he’d survive and even thrive — and each time, Adams was right.

Now, however, Adams has turned his attention from Trump’s merits as a candidate (where Adams seems to have had a great deal of insight) to Trump’s merits as a potential president. And here, despite all his past successes, I am quite sure that Adams has outrun his expertise. Policy analysis and political analysis are, after all, two very different things.

From Adams’s most recent blog post:

My current tax rate is about half of my income when you add up all of the various taxes. I don’t have many deductions. Clinton proposes an estate tax that would take about half of what is left. In effect, Clinton wants my tax rate to be around 75% for every dollar I earn today. That level of taxation would make me feel like a government employee.

First of all, 75% is probably a considerable underestimate; it fails to account for the fact that Adams’s income is already being taxed three or four times, once when he first earns it, again as it throws off a stream of interest, dividends, and/or capital gains, and again as corporate taxes are taken out before he even sees those dividends and capital gains. Not to mention sales and property taxes.

And second of all, yes, some taxes are worse than others and the estate tax, with its associated incentives for rich people to overconsume, is among the worst.

But Adams is fooling himself if he thinks his taxes would be substantially lower under Trump. Ultimately, our tax burden is determined entirely by the amount the government spends. The more they spend, the more they must tax. The taxation can be briefly deferred through borrowing, but ultimately those debts come due and taxes — either on Scott Adams or on the heirs he’s looking out for — must rise.

And here’s the thing: Trump has given us no reason to think he’d spend any less than Clinton would. When you ask him what he wants to cut, his standard answer is “waste, fraud and abuse”. Unless you interpret the words “waste” and “abuse” to mean something like “everything done by the departments of Commerce, Labor, Agriculture, Energy and Health” — and it’s quite clear from context that Trump means no such thing — you’re not going to make a dent in spending. If you make no dent in spending, you can make no dent in taxes. So unfortunately, Scott Adams, you and I are all going to be government employees for a long time, no matter who wins.

Moreover, Trump is calling for a huge additional tax burden on top of all this, namely a system of tariffs that is designed to increase prices of consumer goods by up to 40%. Some of the revenue from those tariffs will make it possible to lower other taxes, but you’ll still be paying just as much overall, and via a tax that’s likely to be even less efficient than estate taxation, which means that the burden (after accounting for changes in consumption patterns, etc.) will be even greater.

Here’s Adams again:

Ironically, we have the two “worst” candidates of all time, according to their favorability ratings. But those two worst candidates have given us two of the best (clearest) choices we have ever had as a country….Sure, both candidates are flawed, but both have the capability to deliver on their main propositions. Clinton probably can give you a third term of Obama(ish) and Trump probably can drain at least some of the swamp.

But —- Trump has shown absolutely no interest in draining the swamp. None. The swamp is his beloved home (it’s Clinton’s too, of course). Trump hasn’t mentioned a single significant government program that he’d kill off. He wants to expand the government’s role in the economy, by dictating (to a much greater extent than currently) who you’re allowed to trade with, who you can hire, and who you can work for. He, like Clinton, wants to forcibly redirect resources to his favorite industries (in her case, renewable energy; in his case, manufacturing). This kind of governmental favoritism for one industry over another is exactly what the swamp consists of. The whole problem is the misuse of government power to control how people choose to allocate their resources and run their lives. Clinton wants more of this. So does Trump.

The good news, if you’re a mainstream Democrat, is that you can’t lose this election. Clinton wants bigger and more intrusive government with more spending (and hence necessarily higher taxes); so does Trump. The bad news, if you’re a mainstream Republican, is that you can’t win. There is no hope that either of these candidates will pursue the sorts of drain-the-swamp policies that I would like to see and that Scott Adams says he would like to see. The only question is where Adams came by the bizarre notion that things might be otherwise.